The Ball Baron, Week 14: Imagining a World with NFL Weight Limits

Welcome to the Ball Baron, where we break down the finer points of Sunday’s NFL action.

There are few things more amusing than NFL commissioner Roger Goodell opening the floor to suggestions on how to make kickoffs "safer." As if changing that one play will have a monumental effect on the damage football does to its players. The most important players usually aren’t even out on the field for it. It’s a fun diversion: a way of looking like you’re doing something to make the game safer when you can’t really do much of anything. Anyway, now that the floor is open to getting rid of the kickoff, people are offering all kinds of nutty suggestions, and one of the crazier ones was to set weight limits for any player on a kickoff team.

This isn’t feasible, of course. You can’t have a vague number of players on the roster who have to adhere to a weight limit. You could only do this is EVERY player had to adhere to a weight limit, which is...actually mildly intriguing?

I fully support a weight limit of 275 pounds. It would reduce injuries and have a positive effect on the short- and long-term health of these men.

The logic is that if you reduce player weight (and why not cut it down to 250 if you’re being serious about it?), you reduce the impact from constant player collisions. I don’t know if this is enough to prevent widespread head trauma—players get plenty of concussions in high school football, and those kids usually don’t weigh as much as NFL players—but it certainly would help prevent the phenomenon of players who now play at 325 lbs. and quickly balloon to 400 lbs. and die of heart disease two days after retiring.

But I’m much more interested in the entertainment value of NFL weight limits. Imagine Saturday night weigh-ins being televised. Imagine a crucial defensive end gorging the night before the Super Bowl and failing to make weight for the game. God, he would get shit on. It would be awesome. And BULIMIA! So much bulimia. I bet Roger Goodell would give anything to turn his brain damage problem into a bulimia problem.

And the product on the field could be improved. No more pesky fat guys for running backs to run around. No more 5,000-lb. linemen rolling into your QB’s leg and ruining everything. No more Tony Siragusa. Yes, that’s right: I would like weight limits for broadcasters.

So I, for one, welcome our new skinny football overlords. Ironically, a thinner NFL can cover up so many more evils of the game than the current fatty boom boom era can.

SELF-LOATHING FANBASE OF THE WEEK: Ravens

Joe Flacco and John Harbaugh’s Ravens are essentially a reincarnation of the Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid’s Eagles: They are a team that is perennially good enough to accomplish absolutely nothing. They aren’t going to a win a Super Bowl as presently constituted, not with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers and Eli Manning all still alive and kicking. Even when Joe Flacco outplays one of these luminaries—as he did against Brady in last year’s AFC title game—the Ravens still find a way to fuck it all up. Yesterday’s Skins game was a perfect encapsulation of what’s wrong with the Ravens: They always LOOK like the best team in football at certain points, and yet they never end up that way. They are a team that provides other teams with inspirational victories, but rarely have any of their own. And they won’t have any in January, either.

TEBOWS OF THE WEEK: Nick Foles and Kirk Cousins

Let’s check Twitter for some of the more nuanced reactions to Foles’ last-second victory over Tampa yesterday:

Josh Munoz @jamz1005>

@Aaronyurdude Foles gonna swing his dick left and right and knock down every pussy in sight His cannon puts haters to sleep#superbowlbound

Bryan Real @IAmBryanReal>

Nick Foles looking good out there!!! He finish like this and I Am ready to label him our future !!

Okay! That seems reasonable, especially the dick-swinging part.

As for Cousins, he’s already getting the whole "Whoa hey, this guy uses fancy words and stuff!" treatment from the likes of Peter King:

Kirk Cousins is going to write for The New Yorker someday, and maybe not about football.

Sportswriters LOVE any athlete who doesn’t "talk like an athlete." All you have to do is mention that you read a book to them and you will hold them in your thrall forever.

DONE TEAM OF THE WEEK: Tampa

Remember when we all thought the Bucs might be a playoff team because we placed way too much value in the fact that Doug Martin suddenly became one of the best backs in fantasy football? That was fun. I hope they spend every play in Week 17 diving at people’s knees.

Superfluous Homer Complaint

If you’re not a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, feel free to skip this section. I know how annoying it is when people get all homery on you, so I apologize in advance. That said, Christian Ponder is ruining everything. I know the Vikings had a surprising win against Chicago yesterday, but they’re going nowhere with Ponder around to fuck it all up.

Adrian Peterson has more total rushing yardage over the past seven weeks than Ponder has passing yards. That is horrible. I know Peterson is balling out of his mind right now—putting on a display of running in the wake of a horrific injury that should vault him into the conversation for the greatest backs to ever play the game—but your running back should never outgain your QB for nearly half a season. When that happens, that means your QB can’t be salvaged. By the end of yesterday’s game, the Vikings were visibly terrified of letting Ponder throw the ball. So why the fuck is he out there? What purpose does he serve? The idea that the Vikings are keeping him out there just so that GM Rick Spielman won’t look like an idiot for drafting him makes me want to burn down my own house. Sometimes GMs whiff on picks. It happens to the best of them (and Spielman has an otherwise good drafting record with the Vikings), so why bother trying to deny it? It only makes the problem worse. Spielman has already said the team is committed to Ponder for next season, which is lunacy. He’s done nothing to earn that security.

Adrian Peterson is gonna have a miracle 2,000-yard season, and for what? To finish up 9-7 and just miss the playoffs? The Vikings could have easily won at Green Bay last week with a mildly competent passing game, but they kept Ponder in to their detriment. There are few things worse than watching a team stubbornly stand by a player when you already know his time is up. Ponder blows. It’s time for him to get the gate.

ANTI-TEBOW OF THE WEEK: Big Ben’s return

Wait, this wasn’t all Charlie Batch’s fault? You mean the Steelers are like this no matter what? Jesus.

My favorite kind of play in football. This happens to me at least twice while throwing a ball out in my yard, but no one is there to see it. Even I don’t acknowledge that it happened. I just act as if a ghost cat did it.

FIVE NICKNAMES JON GRUDEN WILL HAVE FOR JJ WATT THIS EVENING

"I call this guy HIGH VOLTAGE."

"I call this guy JUST JAMMIN’."

"I call this guy THE BIG COW."

"I call this guy I AM NOT IN THE RUNNING FOR ANY FUTURE HEAD COACH OPENINGS AND I AM VERY HAPPY AT ESPN THANK YOU."

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